Today I found out that the word for pomegranate in Hebrew, rimmon רימון, is also the word for grenade.
I also found out that in a variety of languages, pomegranate and grenade are the same/similar word.
According to {Wikipedia}, its all the fault of the French. They named the military grenade after the pomegranate (because of its shape) and the name seems to have stuck.
I resorted to Google Translate to test this out (keep in mind that Google Translate is not always the most accurate so please correct me if there are any mistakes).
- In Afrikaans it is granaat for both words.
- In Dutch it is granaat and granaatappel (grenade apple).
- In French a pomegranate is a grenade, end of story.
- In German it is granate and granatapfel (again, a grenade apple).
- In Haitian Creole both are grenad.
- In Hugarian a grenade is a gránát and a pomegranate is a gránátalma (once again a grenade apple).
- In Latvian you have granātābols and granāta (you guessed it, grenade apples again).
- In Norwegian can you take a guess? Granat and… granateple (in case you missed it that would be a grenade apple again).
- In Polish you get a granat for both.
- In Russian you have гранат for a pomegranate and граната for a grenade.
- In Spanish they are granada.
- In Swedish we have the ever original granat and granatäpple.
- In Welsh they are grenâd and pomgranad (and are surprisingly easy to pronounce!).
There you have it, your useless fact of the day.